The most shocking thing that Liz Garbus saw during the course of making “Who Killed Garrett Phillips?” was when Nick Hillary, the man being tried for Phillips’s murder, chose to have a bench trial (tried before a judge) rather than a jury trial. “All of his lawyers were advising him against it. They told him with 12 jurors, all you need is one to say, ‘I don’t think he did it.’ But with one judge, you have to convince 100% of that one judge,” she details in our recent webchat (watch the video above).

But Hillary remained convinced that his best shot at a fair trial that would be based on the evidence and not on emotion would be the bench trial. “His lawyers felt like [they] had just lost. This man is going to prison. It’s over. And Nick insisted and it’s his decision. I had never seen...